The house is quiet. Which it hasn't been for awhile. The sun is shining through the cold windows. I am fully engaged in my yearly ritual of taking down Christmas.
It was a really good Christmas. Full. We started early with present buying and hanging sparkling icicles outside the house. We listened to tons of Christmas music. We reminisced while we hung up our unique assortment of ornaments. Jake wrapped most of our presents freeing up hours of my time. We drank lots of hot chocolate with marshmallows and candy canes. My parents made the long trip safely. We had festive meals and rich family time, sprawled around the fire place.
But now, after six weeks or so of parties and planning and presents, we're back to normal. Ordinary. Calm. And this solitary act of dismantling seems symbolic to me today.
It is quiet while I wind up the lights, and pad all the ornaments in their boxes. I clear the mantles of stockings, reindeer and the nativity scene. I read through the Christmas cards once more. It's time to start a new year.
I wonder what 2012 will bring. It will have its own great holidays. It will have vacations and trips. Lasts and firsts days of school, weeks at camp. I t will also be filled with lots of every-day moments. Times that will never make the 2012 Christmas cards. Rides to school together every morning. All of us cramming on the couch to watch Man vs. Wild. Sabbath breakfasts. Waiting for the news to confirm a snow day. Summer morning runs at Bent Creek. Raking leaves. Watching puppy and kitty chase each other through the house. Friends coming over to play.
These words from Shauna Niequist's book Cold Tangerines remind me to appreciate every moment.
Today is your big moment. Moments, really. The life you've been waiting for is happening all around you...This is life in all its glory, swirling and unfolding around us, disguised as pedantic, pedestrian non-events...
Your life, right now, today, is exploding with energy and power and detail and dimension, better than the best movie you have ever seen...You have stories worth telling, memories worth remembering, dreams worth working toward, a body worth feeding, a soul worth tending, and beyond that, the God of the universe dwells within you, the true culmination of super and natural.
You are more than dust and bones.
You are spirit and power and image of God.
And you have been given Today.
Christmas of 1911. A little boy in Asheville woke early on Christmas morning and rushed the the fireplace to see what Santa had left in his stocking. In the night his parents had filled it with two coins, three pieces of candy and a little toy fish. But little Emmett had hung up one of his socks with a hole in the toe. The fish fell to the floor in the night, and when he got the fireplace, Emmett's cat had chewed the fish in half.
A few years later, Emmett woke up to a snowy Christmas. He and a friend grabbed their sleds and headed to a nearby hill. The boys flew down the icy hill and couldn't stop before they crossed the road and slid under a bobbed wire fence. Emmett's hand flew up to protect his face and the barbed wire sliced his right hand. His mother dosed it with karosene and wrapped it up. His father snapped "how are you going to keep up with the milking?" Emmett assured his dad that he would do all his milking with one hand even if it took him twice as long. Which that seven year old boy did twice a day until his hand healed up completely.
Those are the two Christmas memories from the last 103 years that came to Emmett's mind during his life review. My memories from this year are easier. A fun week with my parents and family. A lunch party with my coworkers. A festive and Christ filled church service. My dad, back in the role of Santa, starting Christmas Eve with little bags of our favorite candy and darling animal ornaments for the tree. My mom's delicious enchiladas on Christmas Eve and Gfree meatballs for Christmas dinner, and the beautiful outfit she picked out for me, that I wore, eating her yummy food. I will never forget Josh's face when he got an Atlanta Hawks jersey from his auntie Jenn, or Jake's face when he opened his 3DS. I kept cozy in the cold night by holding Steve's hand and singing our last Christmas carols in the car with the boys. And ending Christmas with my annual viewing of Love Actually, this year with my in laws and kitty, in front of the fire place.
Love Actually opens with these words. "Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. .. If you look for it, I've got a sneaking suspicion... love actually is all around."
Merry Christmas!
I recently noticed that the TV shows I watch are mostly about groups of people - the cul de sac crew, the modern family, the CBI and Hawaii 5.0 teams, etc. I like how the groups each have a special a spot to meet, like MacLaren's pub or the conference room at Dunder Mifflin or Jule's kitchen. I like to watch the different personalities annoy and enrich each other. I enjoy their witty banter and teasing. And I love how, against drug dealers or petty neighbors, they always end up having each other's backs.
Eugene Peterson, in Leap Over A Wall writes "Friendship is a much underestimated aspect of spirituality. It's ever bit as significant as prayer and fasting. Like the sacramental use of water and bread and wine, friendship takes what's common in human experience and turns it into something holy. Martin Buber said the greatest thing any person can do for another is to confirm the deepest thing in him, in her - to take the time and have the discernment to see what's most deeply there, most fully that person, and then confirm it by recognizing and encouraging it."
This morning my hunt for a certain patient led me to a large hall crowded with women in wheelchairs. I found my patient, sat beside her and listened to her comment on the other women - "the one who is always with her doll, the one that talks too loud, the one that never eats her soup.." It was fun hearing about her world. Then a man wheeled up and parked in front of one of the ladies. Another lady wheeled in and couldn't get through. She bumped several wheelchairs as she tried to manuver. This caused a bit of a cat fight. I jumped in to rewheel, make a path, and assure the bumpees nothing was done maliciously. When everything settled back down I again sat with my lady. She turned to me smiling, "Its kind of fun to be part of a mob once in awhile, isn't it?"
It sure is! I'm so thankful for all the wonderful people that make up my mobs. I couldn't do it without you...
One of my goals for this week was to be bolder in the experience I offered my patients. I want to make sure that it isn't me that is holding them back from going deeper. This is hospice. There are plenty of deep places to discuss. Sometimes those conversation have an awkward start. My first two patients today I had had nice conversations with but very surface. So today I dove in.
I spent an hour at house #1. We got into a serious conversation about the patient's bucket list and what she hoped to accomplish and forgive before she got too ill to. One glance at her facesheet reminded me that she had a Methodist background. So as I was getting ready to leave I asked if she would like me to pray with her. She began to stammer an excuse while her daughter rolled her eyes. "We aren't really into that kind of thing." she explained. I reiterated my role to assist and enrich her spiritual life in what ever way she chose. At least I had tried.
House #2 found me struggling to make conversation with a sweet, shy widower. He shared, mostly in yes or no responses, how life had changed in the two years he had been alone. He didn't elaborate when I asked about his church background, so I was hesitant to offer prayer. Especially after the last house. But I was supposed to be bold, so I asked if he would like me to pray with him. "Oh would you please? I would love that." He shocked me with the longest sentence of the thirty minutes I had been with him. I pulled my chair closer to his and he took my hands while we prayed.
House #3 was unplanned. A nurse on my team called to say she was doing a new admission for an actively dying Africian American woman. There were many family members present and this would be a good time for the whole team to come by. I arrived at the same time as our social worker and manager. We were greeted by seven adult children who immediately began sharing rich stories of their mother's life of service and acts of kindness. Two sons and the patient's husband were Apostolic ministers. When they asked me to pray over their mother I felt more than a little intimidated. "Be bold Erin" I reminded myself, crowded around mother's bed with my team and 15 family members. As I began to pray, others joined me in praying out loud. The husband began speaking in tongues over his wife, across the bed from me. It was hard to know whether I should concentrate on what I was saying, or enjoy the prayers being lifted around me.
After the amens, a daughter began singing. One after another the family joined in. Haunting Negro Spirituals filled the room with melodies and harmonies blending beautifully and crescendoing. Before long there wasn't a dry eye in the room. It was one of those moments that you can't believe you might have missed. And the perfect end to the spectrum of prayer attempts that day.
Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold. 2 Corinthians 3:12
Years ago, someone gave me a Christmas cactus. There were plenty of green leaves but not a bud in sight. Christmas' came and went. Nothing. I saw other people's plants covered with hundreds of beautiful flowers. Mine remained bare. Every once in a while I would water it, or dust it. I heard it needed cold, so it went to the garage for four months. Nothing. It spent some time in the kitchen, then moved to the bedroom. I read these plants need continuous darkness for at least 12 hours a day to induce bud formation. Several times I came thisclose to throwing it out. But I have the least green thumb out there, and this plant was still alive.
And then last December, buds miraculously appeared. Fifteen or twenty of them, growing bigger and bigger, and then bursting open in ripe, pink lusciousness. They made me smile every time I saw them. They lit up my room.
But I couldn't help but wonder...why now? Had there just been enough darkness and cold? Would the blooms keep coming?
These same questions have been asked by me, and many others on a spiritual level. Brian McLaren adressess them wonderfully in Naked Spirituality.
So again and again we are told in scripture, in dozens of different ways, that the hardships life throws at us are not intended by God to destroy us, but to strengthen us. .. There are days, of course, when we wish there could be some other system. We wish there could be a way of developing patience without delay, courage without danger, forgiveness without offense, generosity without need, skill without discipline, endurance without fatigue, persistence without obstacles, strength without resistance, virtue without temptation and strong love without hard-to-love people. But it turns out that there is no other way. The Creator has created the right kind of universe to produce these beautiful qualities in us creatures.
For all its angst, there's beauty in the season of Perplexity. There's the strength of ruthless honest, the courage of dogged endurance, the companionship of the disillusioned, the determination of the long-distance runner who won't give up even though exhausted. In that act of not giving up, there is faith too, and hope, perhaps the most vibrant faith and hope of all.
The blooms are back this year. Filling my soul with color and promise, and faith and hope too.
